Re:Raspberry Pi 4 can finally boot directly from USB
by ComputerGuru on Friday September 18, 2020 @07:20PM
(#24522820)
> 2. Bootloader available to view the source for, if not completely open source. I understand bootloader can be proprietary tech and they can use non-commercial compete license but allow people to hack them and at the very least view it.
This is a bit of a nitpick, but assuming point one of your post, tbh as an embedded developer there’s nothing magical or worth protecting in a bootloader. It’s such boring and, in the case of embedded systems on a chip, specialized code that really has no commercial value if the hardware documentation is available except in letting you gatekeep what runs on your chip. As in, anyone with the datasheets can write a bootloader and the bootloader provides no value to someone that has their own (proprietary or knockoff) SoC.
All that is to say, the Broadcom bootloader is closed for the same reason the datasheets and documentation are: it’s to prevent revealing the internals of the chip for fear of making it easier to reverse engineer or clone.
This is a bit of a nitpick, but assuming point one of your post, tbh as an embedded developer there’s nothing magical or worth protecting in a bootloader. It’s such boring and, in the case of embedded systems on a chip, specialized code that really has no commercial value if the hardware documentation is available except in letting you gatekeep what runs on your chip. As in, anyone with the datasheets can write a bootloader and the bootloader provides no value to someone that has their own (proprietary or knockoff) SoC.
All that is to say, the Broadcom bootloader is closed for the same reason the datasheets and documentation are: it’s to prevent revealing the internals of the chip for fear of making it easier to reverse engineer or clone.